The latest challenger is David Bellamy, a former BBC broadcaster who has been holding forth on his rather hostile views on climate science.

In a video interview with a British newspaper, he calls peer-reviewed journals as “the last thing I would use now.”

Huh?

If Bellamy has indeed written off the entire scientific community, where is he getting his information to back up his remarkable claims that carbon emissions are not driving climate change?

Hard to say… George Monbiot does an admirable job of trying to unravel Bellamy’s convoluted arguments in an article last week. Let’s try and follow the faint trail of breadcrumbs dropped by the UK’s leading climate change denier.

Among other things, Bellamy maintains that a much warmer climate 2,000 years ago allowed Romans to produce “very very good red wine up in the Scottish borders.”

True? Ah…no. Here is a map of the extent of historical wine production in the UK including both the Roman and Medieval periods, published by Richard Selley, author of The Winelands of Britain.

The good news (if you can call it that) is that Scotland may be promising vineyard habitat by the end of the century due to ballooning emissions of fossil fuels.

The “fine wine” argument instead buttresses the already colossal amount of evidence that the kind of climate change we are now witnessing eclipses anything seen in the historical record.

Bellamy also contends that the famous graph produced by Dr. Michael Mann had been “taken apart and proven to be a fiddle” - a charming turn of phrase but of course entirely wrong.

The basic conclusion of Mann et al. (1998,1999) was that the late 20th century warmth in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during at least the last 1,000 years. This conclusion has subsequently been supported by an array of evidence that includes both additional large-scale surface temperature reconstructions and pronounced changes in a variety of local proxy indicators, such as melting on icecaps and the retreat of glaciers around the world, which in many cases appear to be unprecedented during at least the last 2,000 years.

Bellamy may instead be referring to a fraudulent graph produced by a German high school teacher that was cribbed from an early draft by the IPCC way back in 1900. This cut and paste fakery involved phony temperature scales, extended timelines and amusing claims that the fake graph was correct and the entire IPCC process was wrong. It was also promoted to many schools in Germany.

For a knee-slapping account of this flim-flammery see this account from Realclimate.org.

Bellamy also repeats a favorite refrain of climate deniers that the ice core data shows a lag between temperature increases and CO2 increases. According to him, this indicates the link between CO2 and temperature is all a bunch of hooey.

First of all, ice core data from Greenland and Antarctica dating back many hundreds of thousands of years shows that global temperatures move in lock step with atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Obviously, there is a very strong link between the two.

For one thing, mastodons or our ancient primate ancestors did not drive cars or excavate and burn massive amounts of coal – that is something we are doing for the first time in geologic history. Prehistoric temperature increases were instead started by changes in the Sun’s output or the Earth’s orbit, and then amplified up to five times by the release of carbon in positive feedbacks like melting permafrost or CO2 release from warming oceans.

Third, this extensive ice core record is not something we should take comfort from. We are already seeing evidence of dangerous positive feedbacks which may lead to runaway climate change, whether we in the future decide to drastically reduce CO2 emissions or not. Once we start the train moving, it may pick up speed up even as we try and put on the brakes.

Speaking of ice, Bellamy also claimed in a letter to the New Scientist in 2005 that many of the world’s glaciers “are not shrinking but in fact are growing … 555 of all the 625 glaciers under observation by the World Glacier Monitoring Service in Zurich, Switzerland, have been growing since 1980”

His nemesis George Monbiot took the time to contact World Glacier Monitoring Service and read them Bellamy’s letter. Their response? “This is complete bullshit…Despite his scientific reputation, he makes all the mistakes that are possible.”

It gets worse. Turns out that Bellamy’s “source” likely originated from a website hosted by none other than S. Fred Singer. This professional denier who has worked on behalf of the CFC, tobacco, and oil industries was ostensibly citing a “paper published in Science in 1989”, stating that 55% of glaciers were growing.

Monbiot tried to find such a paper but it does not exist. This phony claim about growing graciers has been making the rounds on the internet for years and was finally put to bed by Desmog Blog last July.

It also turns out that Bellamy apparently meant to type “55%” but missed the shift key and got 555 instead. Bellamy later admitted to a “glitch of the electronics” regarding his letter to the New Scientist, yet never requested a correction be published.

Comments

It’s hard to be generous to Bellamy when one considers that he used to be on the other side of the divide between science and the denialists. As I remember it, Bellamy used to be persuaded by the science that climate change was already happening and was the result of human activity.

Wikipedia agrees.

“The profligate demands of humankind are causing far reaching changes to the atmosphere of planet Earth, of this there is no doubt. Earth’s temperature is showing an upward swing, the so-called greenhouse effect, now a subject of international concern. The greenhouse effect may melt the glaciers and ice caps of the world causing the sea to rise and flood many of our great cities and much of our best farmland.” - David Bellamy in 1989

But despite climate science becoming far more extensive in breadth and depth, Bellamy has completely changed his mind. This really beggars belief.

Let’s remember that Bellamy is a scientist - he’s a Botanist with a PhD and he became a Professor. So presumably he has had a love of searching for the truth. But what happened?

Since he has clearly not been persuaded by the science. It’s hard to conclude that he has either

a) gone mad,

or

b) has sold his soul to the fossil-fuel devil(s).

Since he hangs around with other deniers - apparently he went to the 2009 Heartland Conference, it looks like the answer is b)!

I just dont understand the whole climate change denial movement. What do these people possibly have to gain with these claims? If they are right, well nothing changes at all, and no one will really care, and if they are wrong then the world and our existance on it is sevearly threatened, and millions if not billions of lives are at risk.

I suspect that what is troubling the deniers deep down is that in science in order for your results to be truly valid you need to remove as many of the other variables as possible. Otherwise it could be that one of those other variables is in fact causing what you are seeing rather than the hypothesis you are testing.

I’ve posted a bit more on this topic here:
http://www.green-issues.org/articles/global-warming-deniers

Because it is a principal of scientific thinking to question: is something scientific or not.
Climate has always been changing and the definition of climate includes 30 years average changes.
Climate change movement is political, it is all about change to sustainable industries, which itself, is positive.
On the other hand, let us not forget CARBONDIOXIDEISGOODFORTHEPLANTS, forests biodiversity, agriculture….

David Bellamy was raising the Public’s awareness of environmental issues long before it became “mainstream”. He was and still is a true Environmentalist and Scientist. The fact he happens to disagree with the prevailing orthodoxy, as he did in the past, should be a cause for celebration, rather than criticism.

Yes: ‘David Bellamy was raising the Public’s awareness of environmental issues long before it became “mainstream”. He was and still is a true Environmentalist and [while he may technically may still be a] Scientist.’

He’s either lost the plot or moved over to the DARKSIDE.

What he currently says, is NOT supported by the science.

Could you please explain [in terms of science] his bloopers about glaciers, peer-review and carbon dioxide?

"Fossil-fuel companies have spent millions funding anti-global-warming think tanks, purposely creating a climate of doubt around the science. DeSmogBlog is the antidote to that obfuscation." ~ BRYAN WALSH, TIME MAGAZINE